Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 91423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
I burrow my face into his chest and I let myself drift on my lovely hormonal haze. I could fall asleep like this, but I don’t want to. I want to keep experiencing him. Keep feeling him all around me.
I hear the others getting back. Leo and Luke and Ethel. The guys stay out of the room, but Ethel noses her way in and jumps up on the bed and promptly bites Aiden on the ankle.
“The creature needs training,” he says mildly.
“Ethel! No!” I say. She yaps at me and takes a running leap off the bed, back out to destroy something or someone else, which I really wish she wouldn’t do. Ethel is less of a dog and more of a dog-shaped honey badger at this point.
“It’s time for us to go,” Aiden says, rocking me slightly into wakefulness. I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to stay here. With him. In this moment. I want to feel his protection. I want to enjoy the fact that I will never, ever escape him, not in any way.
“Where are we going?”
He gives the only answer I could possibly accept.
“Home.”
EPILOGUE
Luke
My son is sleeping on my chest.
He was born seven months after we left the bunker. Of course, we called him Teddy. Teddy has big brown eyes, blond hair, and the temperament of a baby who knows that he is so deeply loved that he will never be able to do anything wrong.
Ella stirs beside me. She is fast asleep, her breasts swollen with milk, her sweet body deliciously curvy in post-partum glory. She is even more beautiful than before. Motherhood has given her a new confidence. She asserts herself more, and then takes absolute delight in being put back in her place.
Ethel makes a little feral sound in her sleep. She is curled up next to Ella. She loves the baby more than anything in the world, and she has come to hate anything who is not the baby, or Ella, or Leo, with the fury of a thousand miniature suns.
Aiden has emphasized security to an intense degree, but also taken the fight to the streets, as it were. Everybody who dares pose a hint of a threat finds themselves in extreme peril. The word spreads that the Levins are not to be touched, and peace based on the three pillars of money, power, and unspeakable violence reigns.
As for me? I am clearheaded and truly happy for the first time in almost two decades. Ella is my world. Baby Teddy is my whole life. I silently swear to him every time I hold him that I will protect him with all I am and all I have.
Leo is, well, Leo. He has an active role in Aiden’s new regime, and stays busy doing terrible things to people who probably deserve it. He pretends not to be overly enamored of the baby, but every time Teddy looks at him, he gets the goofiest smile I have ever seen on his face.
Aiden similarly softens around the baby. It would be wrong to suggest he has lost his edge. If anything, the responsibility has sharpened him. We are richer than we have ever been, so I am told. Ella and little Ted will never want for a thing.
We do not know which of us fathered little Teddy, and it is unlikely we will ever discover that intentionally. Many more babies are to follow, of that we are certain. She may even be pregnant again, though Teddy is only a few months old and we are supposed to wait.
Our hurts are healed, our world is intact, and we are going to live…
Happily ever after.
The End